I'm sure there's a plot of Hubble constant vs. time out there but I can't find it. In 1930 it was 500 km/s/Mpc. There was a series of major corrections (oh, there are two kinds of Cepheid variables, we'll have to make the universe bigger). Around 1990 there was a young universe 100 km/s/Mpc faction and an old universe 50 km/s/Mpc faction. Some time after I was in school the sides got together and split the difference between their estimates.

cman:Can someone dumb it down even more? Difficulty: so even I can understand it. I know, its hard, but please, I want to play with the big boys, too

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expandingIn all of the directions it can whizzAs fast as it can go, the speed of light, you knowTwelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is

Kanemano:cman: Can someone dumb it down even more? Difficulty: so even I can understand it. I know, its hard, but please, I want to play with the big boys, too

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expandingIn all of the directions it can whizzAs fast as it can go, the speed of light, you knowTwelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is

cman:Can someone dumb it down even more? Difficulty: so even I can understand it. I know, its hard, but please, I want to play with the big boys, too

Fine. I'll do it:

Just remember that your standing on a planet thats evolving,revolving at nine-hundred miles an hour.Its orbiting at ninety miles a second, so its reckoned.A sun that is the source of all our power.The sun and you and me and all the starsthat we can see are moving at a million miles a dayin an outer spiral arm at forty-thousand miles an hourof the galaxy we call the Milky Way

Our galaxy itselfcontains a hundred billion starsits a hundred thousand lightyears side to sideit bulges in the middlesixteen-thousand lightyears thickbut out by us its just three-thousand lightyears widewere thirty-thousand lightyears from galatic central pointwe go round every two-hundred-million yearsand our galaxy is only one of millions of billions in this amazing and expanding universe.

simplicimus:cman: Anyone think the rubber band theory (the big crunch) is a possibility?

It looks more like we're heading to the heat death.

Yup. From the wikipedia: "Recent experimental evidence (namely the observation of distant supernova as standard candles, and the well-resolved mapping of the cosmic microwave background) has led to speculation that the expansion of the universe is not being slowed down by gravity but rather accelerating. However, since the nature of the dark energy that is postulated to drive the acceleration is unknown, it is still possible (though not observationally supported as of today) that it might eventually reverse sign and cause a collapse."

Which is all the more impressive when you remember that space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

Kanemano:cman: Can someone dumb it down even more? Difficulty: so even I can understand it. I know, its hard, but please, I want to play with the big boys, too

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expandingIn all of the directions it can whizzAs fast as it can go, the speed of light, you knowTwelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is

ZAZ:I'm sure there's a plot of Hubble constant vs. time out there but I can't find it. In 1930 it was 500 km/s/Mpc. There was a series of major corrections (oh, there are two kinds of Cepheid variables, we'll have to make the universe bigger). Around 1990 there was a young universe 100 km/s/Mpc faction and an old universe 50 km/s/Mpc faction. Some time after I was in school the sides got together and split the difference between their estimates.

The universe is expanding so fast, that the things that are far away from you look small because at the time that the light left them to get to your eye, they actually were that small. For instance that TV over there.

Lava_Backflips:I am in our system and in a ship going away from our sun. I am going 2 times the speed of light and hold a mirror up one foot in front of my face, what do I see in the mirror?

You can never go faster than the speed of light based on our current understanding of physics. This seems to be a constraint built into the this Universe, and not likely to change. (but you know that and a making a joke).

Harry_Seldon:Lava_Backflips: I am in our system and in a ship going away from our sun. I am going 2 times the speed of light and hold a mirror up one foot in front of my face, what do I see in the mirror?

You can never go faster than the speed of light based on our current understanding of physics. This seems to be a constraint built into the this Universe, and not likely to change. (but you know that and a making a joke).

If the ship kept accelerating its time would slow down and it could seem to the passengers that they are going faster than light. They would see nothing in the rear view mirror. For some reason the entire universe, including the part behind them, would appear scrunched into a small field of view in front of the ship.

ZAZ:I'm sure there's a plot of Hubble constant vs. time out there but I can't find it. In 1930 it was 500 km/s/Mpc. There was a series of major corrections (oh, there are two kinds of Cepheid variables, we'll have to make the universe bigger). Around 1990 there was a young universe 100 km/s/Mpc faction and an old universe 50 km/s/Mpc faction. Some time after I was in school the sides got together and split the difference between their estimates.

Came for this...which makes the Daily Fail's headline even more failureful.

OriginalGamer:Lava_Backflips: I am in our system and in a ship going away from our sun. I am going 2 times the speed of light and hold a mirror up one foot in front of my face, what do I see in the mirror?

It may not be that the universe is expanding that fast, but it may be that our area of space is moving very quickly, throwing off our readings. I'm not sure how far this space telescope has to be to minimize that effect.

Semi related to that - faster than light travel is sort of possible. If the universe's expansion is accelerating, two objects going in opposite directions could at some point appear to be moving away from one another at faster than light speed, essentially causing those bodies to disappear from our visible view.

Also, this conspiracy article strongly suggests that the DoD has already developed FTL communication. http://astroengineer.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/a-curiosity-of-spirit-fu ll-document/

A quick wiki search shows that there is indeed FTL communication being tested on Earth, and has been reported to be successful at a range of 89 miles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation

As for how we could move objects at faster than light speeds, it would have to involve some type of manipulation of "dark energy," whatever that is. If you could negate the accelerating expansion effect in the area around a spacecraft, you could in theory achieve relative faster than light travel to some object by the same principle that would cause them to disappear from our view, as explained above. However, since we don't even really know what dark energy is, that could be a long way off.

My first thought when I read about the end of entropy was that our actual reality is we are being sucked into some kind of giant black hole. Much like we don't realize how many different directions we are spinning at just amazingly high speeds, earth spins, around the Sun spins, Galaxy spins, Universe spins, etc., we just don't realize what's really happening. My head, it spins. For some reason every time I typed spins I first typed spings and had to go back and correct it. Any farking farker know what a sping is?

IronTom:The universe is expanding so fast, that the things that are far away from you look small because at the time that the light left them to get to your eye, they actually were that small. For instance that TV over there.

It may not be that the universe is expanding that fast, but it may be that our area of space is moving very quickly, throwing off our readings. I'm not sure how far this space telescope has to be to minimize that effect.

Semi related to that - faster than light travel is sort of possible. If the universe's expansion is accelerating, two objects going in opposite directions could at some point appear to be moving away from one another at faster than light speed, essentially causing those bodies to disappear from our visible view.

Also, this conspiracy article strongly suggests that the DoD has already developed FTL communication. http://astroengineer.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/a-curiosity-of-spirit-fu ll-document/

A quick wiki search shows that there is indeed FTL communication being tested on Earth, and has been reported to be successful at a range of 89 miles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation

As for how we could move objects at faster than light speeds, it would have to involve some type of manipulation of "dark energy," whatever that is. If you could negate the accelerating expansion effect in the area around a spacecraft, you could in theory achieve relative faster than light travel to some object by the same principle that would cause them to disappear from our view, as explained above. However, since we don't even really know what dark energy is, that could be a long way off.

Not a scientist, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Did you say FTL?

/Just got the Engi ship. This game is HARD but enjoyable because of that.

Wait wait wait... FTL is finally out?! As in, I can download and play it? How much and where do I go?